In the era of distributed ledger technology, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is not simply a piece of software but has become an industry standard, acting as the "heart" that operates the entire smart contract ecosystem. According to expert analysis from Tan Phat Digital, EVM has upgraded blockchain from a simple financial transaction ledger to a decentralized "World Computer", allowing transparent and irreversible execution of program code on thousands of network nodes worldwide.
1. Nature and Role of EVM in Blockchain
Technically, EVM is a software virtual machine embedded inside each Ethereum network node. It provides a completely isolated "sandbox" environment, ensuring that code execution does not affect the rest of the host operating system and maintaining data uniformity across the network.
Core characteristics of EVM include:
Determinism:EVM ensures that with the same input state and the same transaction, every network node computes an identical output, creating absolute consensus.
Turing-complete: EVM is capable of performing any logical calculation, allowing the development of complex decentralized applications (dApps) from DeFi, NFTs to DAOs.
State management: EVM continuously monitors and updates global state of the blockchain, including account balances, contract codes, and data stored after each block of transactions.
2. Detailed Technical Architecture
EVM is designed with a stack-based architecture with a word size of 256-bit, an optimal choice for cryptographic algorithms and Keccak-256 hashing operations. The data structure of EVM is divided into the following main storage components:
Stack: A LIFO (last in, first out) list of up to 1024 elements. This is where local variables and temporary calculation parameters are kept with extremely fast access speed.
Memory: A linear byte array used to store temporary data during a transaction. Memory usage costs will increase as a square function based on data size.
Storage: The permanent storage component and permanent data storage of the smart contract. This is the most expensive part of the EVM architecture because it directly changes the state of the blockchain.
Calldata: A read-only data area containing input parameters sent with transactions from users or from other contracts.
The global state of the system is managed through the Modified Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT) structure, which enables efficient data validation and supports Supports Merkle proofs without downloading the entire blockchain history.
3. Operational Workflow: From Solidity to Opcodes
Developers often use high-level languages like Solidity or Vyper to build applications. However, EVM does not understand these languages directly but needs to go through a conversion process:
Compilation Phase: Solidity source code is converted by the compiler into Bytecode, a hexadecimal character string that is difficult to read for humans but optimal for virtual machines.
Execution Phase: Bytecode is broken down into Opcodes (instruction codes). EVM processes about 140 unique opcode types, including basic operations such as ADD, MUL and specific commands such as BALANCE, SSTORE or CREATE.
Tan Phat Digital notes that developers need to clearly distinguish between Deployment Bytecode - which runs only once to initialize the contract, and Runtime Bytecode - the logic that is stored permanently. permanently on the chain for users to interact with later.
4. Gas Fee Mechanism and Network Economics
Gas is the unit that measures the computational effort of each operation performed on the EVM. This mechanism plays a vital role in protecting the network:
Spam Prevention: Prevents spam attacks and infinite loop errors (DDoS) by requiring a cost for each computational step.
Resource Allocation: Ensures that complex, resource-intensive transactions are charged accordingly.
Validator rewards:Gas fees are used to incentivize network nodes to maintain computing power and system security.
The standard transaction fee formula applied is:
Transaction Fee = Gas Used x Gas Price
Each opcode type has a fixed gas fee specified in Ethereum's technical documentation, for example arithmetic operations are often much cheaper than with writing data to permanent storage.
5. EVM Compatibility and Compatibility Ecosystem
The popularity of Ethereum has created a common standard, leading to the creation of many other networks that support this execution environment:
EVM Compatibility:Networks can run Solidity contracts but may have slight changes in consensus mechanism or fee structure. Typical examples are BNB Smart Chain (BSC), Avalanche (C-Chain) and Polygon PoS.
EVM Equivalence: These networks perfectly copy Ethereum's architecture down to the smallest detail, allowing 100% use of existing development tools without modifications. Notable examples include Optimism, Base, and Zora.
This ecosystem brings huge benefits to both users (using the same MetaMask wallet address across multiple chains) and developers (easily migrating applications to expand the customer base).
6. Technology Breakthrough: Parallel EVM and Vision 2026
The biggest limitation of traditional EVM is single-threaded (sequential) processing, making the network susceptible to congestion. New solutions are moving towards Parallel EVM (parallel EVM):
Parallel processing: Allows unrelated transactions to be performed simultaneously, instead of having to wait in a queue. Breakthrough projects like Sei and Monad have achieved impressive throughputs of 10,000 to 12,500 transactions per second (TPS).
Database optimization: Using structures like MonadDB or Sei AVL-tree that support asynchronous I/O eliminates the bottleneck in reading/writing network state.
Exposing Future plans:By 2026, Ethereum and EVM chains are expected to strongly shift towards zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) authentication, which will drive scalability to new levels while reducing hardware requirements for validating nodes.
7. Wallets and Multi-Chain Address Management
Thanks to the BIP-44 standard, users can manage assets across multiple networks with just a single recovery phrase:
Standard derivation path: m / purpose' / coin_type' / account' / change / address_index. In particular, Ethereum and most EVM chains use coin_type code of 60.
Address generation mechanism: The public key is hashed using the Keccak-256 algorithm, then takes the last 20 bytes and adds a 0x prefix to create a familiar wallet address.
Although the convenience is very high, Tan Phat Digital always recommends that users carefully check the network when performing cross-chain transactions (bridge) to ensure asset safety.
EVM has been affirming its position as the "common language" of Web3. With continuous improvements in parallel processing performance and ZK security technology, EVM will continue to be the core platform driving the development of the global digital economy in the future.
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